I am often asked if bleaching is safe for the teeth. A research article just published in the Journal of the American Dental Association (June 2012) analyzed the effects of home use and in office bleaching treatments on the calcium and phosphorus concentrations of tooth enamel. The final conclusion was that bleaching did not weaken the teeth by leaching out the calcium or phosphorus- the main components of enamel.

I do recommend caution though- natural teeth are not so white that they glow in the dark! Bleaching should be done to make the teeth brighter and look younger- not to look fake.

The materials we use at Magnolia Dental Care are proven safe and we like to monitor things closely to keep you from over whitening or causing the teeth to get sensitive.

Last week I had Dr. Robert Kerstein give a class to several dentist in my office on advanced uses of the TekScan computer bite analysis system. Dr. Kerstein is the world expert in this technology and has written over 40 scientific journal articles on the subject.

I have been utilizing the Tekscan for about 18 months now. It allows me to see how the teeth are coming together with a precision that was never available. I not only can see which teeth hit harder but also see the timing of when they hit in 1/100 of a second intervals.

I can now treat many cases of TMJ problems and sore teeth with accuracy and speed that were never before possible.

Recently I had two patients ask me if I did cosmetic dentistry or should they go somewhere else for that. My answer was a resounding YES – we do cosmetic dentistry (and are really good at it too). Read more »

X-RAYS: Just recently there has been a lot of buzz about a study correlating a benign form of brain tumor to dental X-rays. This study was based on X-rays taken in the 1960’s and correlated to a higher incidence of problems with people that had even one dental X-ray taken during that time frame. Read more »